1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and system for dynamically displaying a control bar of a multimedia player, and more particularly to a scheme for dynamically adjusting the position of the control bar shown on a screen, in order to prevent overlap occurred to the menu image provided by a multimedia source.
2. Description of Related Art
With the development of audio-video entertainment environment, people are increasingly having higher requirements for watching high-resolution video, especially from the optical storage products such as DVD (digital versatile disc) and Blu-ray Disc—the next generation optical storage.
In general, both DVD and Blu-ray Disc are versatile optical storage media that provide many functions in addition to the multimedia content. Currently, the content stored in DVD having high capacity storage offers users a menu system in accompany with some functions—including some options of playback, sections to be played, pronounced languages, subtitles to be shown on the screen, and some other sub-features. Therefore, the users may be able to select the various options through an interactive user interface using a remote control manner.
In practice, when the mentioned versatile optical storage media is inserted into a multimedia player, such as a DVD player, a personal computer, a home media center, a portable video player or the similar devices, and being played, a disc menu associated with the above mentioned menu system will be shown on a screen of the player. That is the disc menu provided by the content of the multimedia stored in the discs. Simultaneously, the multimedia player itself may also provide a control bar with some other options for users to make selection. That is, the software or firmware installed in the multimedia player may provide other functions in addition to the menu system provided by the multimedia content.
Generally, when a video DVD is inserted into a DVD player installed in the computer system, the DVD player will read the video DVD immediately and show a first menu the screen after some initializing steps. The first menu usually provides some selective options such as play, sections, languages, subtitles, bonuses and the like. Moreover, the multimedia player may also provide some functions shown on the screen for the user to have the additional options.
The user uses a pointing device, such as a mouse, to move the pointer over the option of the first menu in order to trigger it. However, the movement of the pointer may also trigger the multimedia player to show its options associated with the functions on the screen. Therefore, on the screen, the later shown pattern including the options provided by the multimedia player will overlap the previous shown pattern having the selections made by the first menu.
Referring to FIG. 1 showing a screen shot with a general situation from a DVD video, where a control bar 15 provided by the multimedia player overlaps the background pattern (11, 12) provided by the disc content. Usually, when the multimedia content contained in the disc is reproduced by a multimedia player, the disc menu with several selective options will be shown on an area 11 of the screen 10 in the beginning, and sometimes other accompanying images will be shown on another area 12 further. At the moment, the control bar 15 may be triggered and shown on the screen 10 responsive to the user's operation.
Preferably, the shown disc menu and the accompanying background patterns (11, 12) are provided by the multimedia content, and the control bar 15 is provided by the multimedia player. Thus the user may not use some functions of the selective options shown in the background pattern when they are overlapped by the foreground control bar 15.
Some prior approaches were disclosed to solve the forgoing problem as foreground image provided by the multimedia player overlapping the current background pattern during reproduction of the video. The similar situation occurs to an on-screen-display (OSD) in response to operation by a user during reproduction of the video. Please refer to U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0081931, which provided a scheme to avoid the overlapping.
The OSD is an image superimposed on a screen picture to display information such as volume, channel, and time made by the player. The OSD will be shown that is conventionally overlaid on the main menu originally displayed on the screen according to the user's operation. Reference is made to FIG. 2 showing an example in which the menu items are highlighted and the OSD are displayed on the screen.
As shown in FIG. 2, wherein, a screen 20 shows a main menu with items (201, 202, 203, 204) having highlighted “1. SELECT CHAPTER”, “2. SELECT CAPTION”, etc. According to the disclosure, the positions of the highlighted items are analyzed firstly, then the OSD 1 is attempted to display on the screen but shifted to a new position as the shown OSD 2. Therefore, the OSD 2 does not overlap the menu items 201, 202, 203 and 204 after the estimation of the positions of the highlighted areas.
Furthermore, in contrast, the method of retrieving and analyzing the sub-picture data from data of DVD video of the prior art requires high graphics processing ability, so it makes the resource exhausted by the analyzing manner.